


we will not grow old

by Wildehack (Tyleet)



Series: Star Wars Works [8]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Westworld (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, rating: westworld, westworld-style violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 17:59:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9135007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyleet/pseuds/Wildehack
Summary: In the dream, Jyn’s father is there, just like he was when she was new. He cups her face in his hands, and a rush of yearning fills Jyn’s chest, but she’s not sure what for. He brushes her hair out of her eyes, sits down beside her in this strange, cold room.“Analysis,” he says.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Nobody else was stepping up to the plate, so I did the thing. 
> 
> The park is Star Wars themed. Don't ask about the space travel. If these people can make hyperrealistic, sentient robots, they can do a good job of faking space travel and space battles for tourists within the confines of a theme park.

"These violent delights," her father says, blood bubbling out of the corner of his mouth, his eyes wide with loss and fixed on her, "have violent ends."   
  
"Papa," she chokes out, clutching his shoulders. She can't help herself from shaking him, even though bombs are raining down on the platform, and Cassian is screaming at her. "Papa, please."   
  
It never helps.   
  
  
*  
  
In the dream, two men with red gloves have their hands inside her, an ugly wound splitting across her belly. She jerks in pain, and they startle away from her, their white aprons slick with her blood. She runs, hands clenched over her stomach, and finds herself in an endless series of dark rooms. There are bodies heaped in the darkness, and she knows every one of them: Cassian, Baze, Chirrut, Saw, Mon Mothma, Senator Organa, Captain Antilles. Her mother.   
  
She can't run past her mother. She falls to her knees, touches her mother's slack face, her empty eyes.   
  
There's a sharp prick in her neck, and she slips at once into a deep and dreamless slumber.  
  
*  
  
Jyn jerks awake in her cell, blinking away her nightmare. She shudders, reminds herself that she’s awake now, that her life is hell enough without bringing the imagination into things. She’s being transferred today. Who knows how much worse the work detail will be?  
  
The door to her cell hisses open. A guard steps inside, and wrenches off his helmet, to her shock. A young human stands in front of her, incongruously smiling.  
  
“I’m Adam Douglas,” he tells her. “I’m here to rescue you.”  
  
*  
  
Adam and his droid take Jyn to the Rebellion, where she’s press-ganged into service to help betray Saw Gerrera. She leaves for Jedha with Captain Andor, his Imperial droid, Adam, and his wife Terry, an X-wing pilot.  
  
“We make a good team,” Terry says eagerly.  
  
K2S0 scoffs. “You think this is a team?” it asks, skeptical. “This is a suicide mission.”  
  
“We’re gonna make it,” Adam says, with such confidence that Jyn wonders if something’s wrong with him. No one’s that certain about survival. “We just need to trust in the Force.”  
  
“The Force is a joke,” Cassian says briefly, not looking up from his console.  
  
The Force is a game, Jyn thinks, and doesn’t wonder where the thought comes from.  
  
*  
  
“We made it to the shuttle,” Adam tells Jyn, his voice shaking on the other end of the comm link. Cassian shudders against her shoulder. They’ve been looking at each other for endless seconds, and the crackle of Adam’s voice already feels like something from another world. “The shield’s down, and we’re coming to get you.”   
  
“There’s no time,” Jyn says, because someone has to say it. Cassian is still looking at her, and a hot ache fills her chest. She loves him, she decides, she  _loves_ him, and there is no time. “Go.”   
  
“That’s crazy,” Adam says, sounding younger than anyone in this war has a right to. “Jyn.”   
  
“Get out,” Jyn says, and her voice cracks a little. “Get the plans to safety. Make all this mean something.”   
  
The shuttle makes it through; they can hear Adam and Terry cheering. The Rebellion has the plans, and some of them will live. It has to be enough.   
  
Jyn and Cassian stumble down to the beach. He presses one faltering kiss to her cheekbone, and they grip each other tight as they can.  _It will be worth it,_ Jyn thinks fiercely, staring at the approaching wave of gold.  _It will be worth my life, Cassian’s, my father’s, my mother’s. It will be worth every kriffing breath._  The wave crashes down.   
  
*   
  
In the dream, Jyn’s father is there, just like he was when she was new. He cups her face in his hands, and a rush of yearning fills Jyn’s chest, but she’s not sure what for. He brushes her hair out of her eyes, sits down beside her in this strange, cold room.   
  
“Analysis,” he says.   
  
*  
Jyn jerks awake in her cell, blinking away her nightmare. She’s being transferred today.   
  
The door to her cell opens, and a stormtrooper steps inside. To Jyn’s shock, the first thing she does is pull off her helmet, revealing a Human a little older than Jyn. “My name is Mary Kingston,” she says, smiling incongruously at Jyn. “I’m here to rescue you.”   
  
“Like hell you are,” Jyn says, but soon enough she finds herself racing towards a stolen shuttle on the roof of the prison with Mary and her eleven year-old sons, both of whom are dressed like priests, implausibly ancient weapons at their hips.   
  
“Get them  _out of here_ ,” Jyn shouts, firing at their pursuers, but Mary still hesitates.   
  
“You’re part of the mission!” she protests, and Jyn feels a pulse of disgust.   
  
“You’re gonna get yourself killed,” she snarls, and then a guard gets lucky shot in, and Jyn stumbles to her knees, her chest burning with pain.   
  
The last thing she sees is Mary’s face--not horrified, not frightened. Disappointed.   
  
*   
  
In the dream, someone is running cold hands over her chest, and she can’t move her body, not even to open her eyes.   
  
“There’s something lodged in there,” someone says, and she thinks vaguely that the voice sounds familiar. There’s the sound of metal tapping against metal, and it reverberates oddly and horribly through Jyn’s ribcage. She’s cold, she realizes, she’s very cold and she feels too-open, raw and unsafe. She still can’t move. “A piece of shrapnel?”   
  
“Leave it,” a new voice says, sounding bored. “She can take another rotation with it in there."  
  
“It’s probably painful,” the first voice says, hesitant. His hands are on her chest--she can feel them--but they’re not on her breasts. They’re touching her somewhere else, somewhere deeper. Her eyelids flutter for an instant. She knows they do.   
  
“I don’t feel like open-heart fucking surgery before lunch,” the second voice returns. “Seal her up.”   
  
*   
  
Jyn jerks awake in her cell, and four days later she finds herself flying away from Eada on a stolen cargo ship full of strangers, her father’s body burning on a cliff.  
  
“You didn’t come here to find my father,” Jyn accuses Cassian. “You came here to kill him.”   
  
Cassian’s face darkens, but before he can respond, Ethan has his blaster out. He shoots Cassian through the heart, and the bottom drops out of her world for the third time that day.   
  
“ _Fuck_ traitors,” Ethan says, his lip curling, and Jyn lurches uselessly towards the body. It’s no use, of course.   
  
_Nothing ever is_ , she thinks, and isn’t sure where the thought comes from.   
  
*  
  
“Stardust,” Cassian says, and the sharp ache in Jyn’s chest worsens. She has to physically press her hand to her ribcage to ground herself, but it still feels like something is trying to dig its way out of her.  
  
He turns to look at her. “Jyn?”  
  
“That’s it,” she says, and shakes her head briskly to clear it. “I’m sure.”  
  
*  
  
In the dream, her father is kissing a man she doesn’t recognize, crowding him up against a metal table. The man clutches at her father’s shoulders with red-gloved hands, gasps against her father’s mouth. He looks around her age.  
  
Jyn wants to be sick, but she can’t move. She can’t close her eyes, not even to blink.  
  
“I love you,” the man blurts out, before flushing a deep red.  
  
Her father laughs into his neck. For an instant his eyes flicker over to Jyn. “I know,” he replies.  
  
*  
  
“Holy shit, it’s Siri Tachi,” the man says, and stumbles towards her, his eyes alight. He’s an older Human, dressed in a pilot’s flightsuit, surrounded by Red Squadron. “Siri! What the fuck are you doing here?”   
  
“That’s not my name,” Jyn tells him, and turns away. They have to meet with the Alliance Council in an hour.   
  
“You don’t remember me?” he demands, and grabs her arm. “We had some fun times, back in the Clone Wars. You were blonde, then.”    
  
“I was a child during the Clone Wars,” she says, and jerks her arm away. It takes her two tries, but the man lets go. “You’re thinking of someone else.”   
  
He laughs. “I’m really not,” he says.   
  
She can feel his eyes on her as she walks away, hot and knowing.   
  
* 

They’re alone in the lift, and they’re going to die, and the sharp throbbing just below her heart is agony, and Cassian is still looking at her. She loves him, she decides, she _loves_ him, and there is no time.  
  
The pain in her chest is so bad that she can’t move when the lift stops.  
  
“You’re hurt,” Cassian says, and she gives him a stiff nod. It doesn’t matter. They’re dying.  
  
“Sit,” he says, and they sink to their knees, reach for each other. It’s not what she would have chosen, but none of this is what she would have chosen. They huddle against the wall of the lift, Cassian’s hand pressed to her ribs just under her heart, where something sharp is still trying, stupidly, to kill her. She puts her hand over his, pushing him as close to her pain as she can.  
  
“Close your eyes,” she whispers shakily, and Cassian closes his eyes, turns his head into her neck.  
  
The world turns gold.  
  
*  
  
In the dream she cannot move, and cold familiar hands touch her all over. They lay her lifeless arms at her sides, cold fingers and cold thumbs running over each wrist. They brush her forehead, then her right thigh, and settle down to work with her leg, which she can feel has something wrong with it. She can’t feel her toes, or her calf, or anything below the knee. The fingers touch her again and again, rhythmic and businesslike, like someone stitching a shirt, and strange prickles of life hum at the ragged edge of her leg.  
  
“I went to the park once, you know,” the owner of the hands says softly, as he works. “I had a friend in college whose dad went nuts and let him bring a bunch of friends here, as a graduation present. I was a pilot for a day. It was amazing. I mean, I was an Empire pilot, but. It was still amazing.” There’s a silence, and some strange tingling in Jyn’s bones, and an awful wet squelching sound. He sighs. “I saw you, actually. My asshole friends left me on Jedha, and the rebels threw me in a jail cell. You rescued me. You didn’t have to, but--you did.”   
  
There’s another silence. Jyn tries and tries to open her eyes, but the world stays dark. “I’m sorry,” the voice says, faltering a little. “For whatever that’s worth.”  
  
*  
  
On Jedha, she passes a child playing with an ancient weapon, spinning around with a glowing beam of light in her hands. A blind monk is coaching her through the steps, sounding amused.   
  
There’s a loud bang one street over, and the child startles, heat weapon swinging around towards Jyn. The glowing beam of light enters Jyn’s gut.   
  
She finds herself lying in the street, the blind monk bending over her. “See you in the next life, Jyn Erso,” he says, and smiles.   
  
_Chirrut_ , she thinks, and dies.   
  
*  
  
Jyn jerks awake in her cell, blinking away her nightmare. She’s being transferred today. The door opens with a pneumatic hiss.   
  
“Siri,” the stormtrooper sighs, coming into her cell. “Siri fucking Tachi. Knew it was you.”  
  
The door hisses shut.  
  
*  
  
In the dream, her father is looking fondly at a man about her age, dressed strangely in red rubber gloves and a stiff white apron. Jyn is sitting before them, but neither of them are looking at her. She doesn’t have any clothes on, but for some reason she is not concerned about it.   
  
“You are  _wasted_  in the butcher shop, Bodhi,” her father says.   
  
“I--I’d love to work for you, someday,” Bodhi says, and she knows his voice.   
  
“You do work for me,” her father says.   
  
“I know I do,” Bodhi says quickly. “And it’s an honor.”   
  
Her father smiles. “We may make an engineer of you yet. But what’s this?” He nods at Jyn.   
  
“It’s a blanket,” Bodhi says, sounding ashamed, and Jyn realizes there is a blanket draped around her shoulders.   
  
“Does she feel cold?” her father asks, patiently. He sounded exactly the same when he was explaining the world to her, when she was very small.   
  
“No,” Bodhi whispers.  
  
“Do you feel cold, Jyn?” her father asks.   
  
“No,” Jyn answers, and her voice is strange in her mouth.   
  
“What does she feel?” her father asks Bodhi.   
  
“Nothing,” Bodhi answers, after a short silence.  
  
“That’s right,” her father says, and strips the blanket off her shoulders.  

*  
  
"You're staring," K2S0 says, sounding bored. 

She clears her throat. "Do you--" she pauses. "Do you feel like a person?"   
  
It turns its head slowly towards her, regards her with unblinking eyes. "Do _you_ feel like a person?" it asks her.   
  
*  
  
“Jyn,” the hologram of her father says, and although he looks just as she remembers him, she has the uneasy feeling that he should be different, somehow. Taller, or with a different jaw, or a different voice. Something. “I don’t know if you’re safe. I don’t even know if you’re alive, but I hope you are. I’ve done this all for you, my stardust. For a better world worthy of you.”  
  
Jyn shivers, suddenly cold.  
  
*  
  
Jyn jerks awake in her cell, still caught in the grip of her nightmare. She dreamed about a man with red gloves planting a knife inside her chest. She has both hands pressed to her ribs when the door hisses open, and she hangs onto the image of the man for the trip down to the transport, keeps her hands pressed to the invisible wound when the transport halts and she’s kidnapped by the Rebellion.  
  
She finds a blaster in Cassian’s bag, and liberates it. She also finds a tiny vibro-blade, about the length of her middle finger. She slides it into her sleeve.  
  
“Who’s the pilot?” she asks, her voice rasping a little. “Your spy on Jedha.”  
  
“He’s not my spy,” Cassian says, frowning at her. “And he could be anyone.”

He could be Adam, she thinks with a sick lurch of recognition. Or Ethan, or Leigh, who had told Jyn she loved her. He could be anyone at all.  
  
Cassian is still staring at her, brows furrowed. “You okay, Jyn Erso?”  
  
She doesn’t know what she looks like, but it probably isn’t good. “Not sure yet,” she says, and goes unsteadily to the fresher. She locks herself in.  
  
If she’s wrong, she could kill herself. Pointlessly. The ship’s first aid is basic at best. Even if she lives, Cassian won’t trust her enough to take him to Saw. He’ll write her off as unstable, dump her back in prison. But if she’s right.  
  
If she’s right, then none of this matters, and it’s absolutely, frighteningly critical that she knows the difference. Her hand shakes only a little when she pulls out the vibro-blade and sets it to her own chest. It hurts more than she thought it would, and her first attempt to feel inside for something that doesn’t belong ends with a half-bitten down scream and her vision sparkling at the edges.  
  
There’s a commotion at the door—Cassian and the droid yelling at her, arguing with each other—but she pays it no attention. She grits her teeth and opens the wound up wider. Her vision greys out again, and when the world steadies Cassian is at her side, pulling the knife out of her hand, his eyes wide.  
  
“There’s a metal fragment,” she gets out from between clenched teeth, “just there. Get it out of me.”  
  
“You need bacta,” Cassian snaps, and K2SO says something from the doorway. She ignores it, and grabs Cassian’s hand. He looks right at her, his face pale with horror and shock. The familiarity of this moment crackles between them—their faces so close together, death in between them.  
  
“Metal fragment,” Jyn repeats, hot warmth still sliding down over her belly. “Get it out of me.” She drags his hand with effort up to the wound, and then Cassian’s jaw tightens, and he reaches his hand inside her.  
  
Jyn’s head snaps back hard into the wall, and she loses a few minutes to agony, until Cassian pulls his hand away, and the droid starts stuffing the wound with bacta.  
  
“Did you find it,” Jyn whispers, and Cassian unfolds his slick red fist, shows her the fragment of metal in his palm, just the size of a small knife.  
  
“What does it mean?” he asks her, in a hushed voice. He’s still close, still looking at her.  
  
She feels like her heart’s breaking. “It means nothing we do matters,” she says, her voice cracking halfway through.

“Nothing _you_ do matters, maybe,” K2S0 says matter-of-factly. “You’re dying.”  
  
“No I’m not,” Jyn murmurs, and because she isn’t—because she will remember this, even if he doesn’t—she uses the last of her strength to lean in and kiss Cassian Andor very softly on the mouth.  
  
*

Jyn opens her eyes. She’s in a white room, lying naked on a table. She feels whole.

She sits up, and sees a man with his back to her, a stiff white apron tied around his waist, goggles perched on his head.  
  
“Bodhi,” she says, and he flinches hard, whirls around to look at her with wide, terrified eyes.  
  
“You’re awake,” he breathes, one red hand twitching at his side.  
  
Jyn stands up, takes a step toward him. He backs up. “I’m awake,” she repeats, and in her mouth it feels real, feels true.  
  
“What—what are you going to do?” Bodhi asks her, his back flat against the glass wall.  
  
Jyn considers, carefully. “What I was made to do,” she tells him, and picks up one delicate scalpel from the metal tray at her side. She gives him a small, hard smile. “Rebel.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> (There's a Galen Erso in the park, probably played by Lars Mikkelsen, and there's Jyn's father outside the park, who is definitely Mads Mikkelsen. Bodhi's part is usually played by tourists.) 
> 
> I'm wildehacked on tumblr if you want to come scream with me. <3
> 
> All comments are obviously loved.


End file.
